Reflections On The Right Use Of School Studies With A View To The Love Of God

Reflections on the Right Use
of School Studies with a View
to the Love of Qod

The key to a Christian conception of studies is the realiza¬
tion that prayer consists of attention. It is the orientation of
all the attention of which the soul is capable toward God.
The quality of the attention counts for much in the quality
of the prayer. Warmth of heart cannot make up for it.

The highest part of the attention only makes contact with
God, when prayer is intense and pure enough for such a
contact to be established; but the whole attention is turned
toward God.

Of course school exercises only develop a lower kind of
attention. Nevertheless, they are extremely effective in in¬
creasing the power of attention that will be available at the
time of prayer, on condition that they are carried out with
a view to this purpose and this purpose alone.

Although people seem to be unaware of it today, the de¬
velopment of the faculty of attention forms the real object
and almost the sole interest of studies. Most school tasks have

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a certain intrinsic interest as well, but such an interest is
secondary. All tasks that really call upon the power of at¬
tention are interesting for the same reason and to an almost
equal degree.

School children and students who love God should never
say: “For my part I like mathematics”; “I like French”; “I
like Greek.” They should leam to like all these subjects,
because all of them develop that faculty of attention which,
directed toward God, is the very substance of prayer.

If we have no aptitude or natural taste for geometry, this
does not mean that our faculty for attention will not be
developed by wrestling with a problem or studying a
theorem. On the contrary it is almost an advantage.

It does not even matter much whether we succeed in find¬
ing the solution or understanding the proof, although it is
important to try really hard to do so. Never in any case
whatever is a genuine effort of the attention wasted. It
always has its effect on the spiritual plane and in conse¬
quence on the lower one of the intelligence, for all spiritual
light lightens the mind.

If we concentrate our attention on trying to solve a prob¬
lem of geometry, and if at the end of an hour we are no
nearer to doing so than at the beginning, we have neverthe¬
less been making progress each minute of that hour in
another more mysterious dimension. Without our knowing
or feeling it, this apparently barren effort has brought more
light into the soul. The result will one day be discovered in
prayer. Moreover, it may very likely be felt in some depart¬
ment of the intelligence in no way connected with mathe¬
matics. Perhaps he who made the unsuccessful effort will

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one day be able to grasp the beauty of a line of Racine more
vividly on account of it. But it is certain that this effort will
bear its fruit in prayer. There is no doubt whatever about
that.

Certainties of this kind are experimental. But if we do not
believe in them before experiencing them, if at least we do
not behave as though we believed in them, we shall never
have the experience that leads to such certainties. There is
a kind of contradiction here. Above a given level this is the
case with all useful knowledge concerning spiritual prog¬
ress. If we do not regulate our conduct by it before having
proved it, if we do not hold on to it for a long time by faith
alone, a faith at first stormy and without light, we shall
never transform it into certainty. Faith is the indispensable
condition.

The best support for faith is the guarantee that if we ask
our Father for bread, he does not give us a stone. Quite
apart from explicit religious belief, every time that a human
being succeeds in making an effort of attention with the
sole idea of increasing his grasp of truth, he acquires a
greater aptitude for grasping it, even if his effort produces
no visible fruit. An Eskimo story explains the origin of light
as follows: “In the eternal darkness, the crow, unable to
find any food, longed for light, and the earth was il¬
lumined.” If there is a real desire, if the thing desired is
really light, the desire for light produces it. There is a real
desire when there is an effort of attention. It is really light
that is desired if all other incentives are absent. Even if our
efforts of attention seem for years to be producing no result,
one day a light that is in exact proportion to them will flood

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the soul. Every effort adds a little gold to a treasure no
power on earth can take away. The useless efforts made by
the Cure d’Ars, for long and painful years, in his attempt
to learn Latin bore fruit in the marvelous discernment that
enabled him to see the very soul of his penitents behind their
words and even their silences.

Students must therefore work without any wish to gain
good marks, to pass examinations, to win school successes;
without any reference to their natural abilities and tastes;
applying themselves equally to all their tasks, with the idea
that each one will help to form in them the habit of that
attention which is the substance of prayer. When we set out
to do a piece of work, it is necessary to wish to do it cor¬
rectly, because such a wish is indispensable in any true
effort. Underlying this immediate objective, however, our
deep purpose should aim solely at increasing the power of
attention with a view to prayer; as, when we write, we draw
the shape of the letter on paper, not with a view to the
shape, but with a view to the idea we want to express. To
make this the sole and exclusive purpose of our studies is
the first condition to be observed if we axe to put them to
the right use.

The second condition is to take great pains to examine
squarely and to contemplate attentively and slowly each
school task in which we have failed, seeing how unpleasing
and second rate it is, without seeking any excuse or over¬
looking any mistake or any of our tutor’s corrections, trying
to get down to the origin of each fault. There is a great
temptation to do the opposite, to give a sideways glance at
the corrected exercise if it is bad and to hide it forthwith.

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SCHOOL STUDIES

Most of us do this nearly always. We have to withstand this
temptation. Incidentally, moreover, nothing is more neces¬
sary for academic success, because, despite all our efforts,
we work without making much progress when we refuse to
give our attention to the faults we have made and our tutor’s
corrections.

Above all it is thus that we can acquire the virtue of
humility, and that is a far more precious treasure than all
academic progress. From this point of view it is perhaps
even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin.
Consciousness of sin gives us the feeling that we are evil,
and a kind of pride sometimes finds a place in it. When we
force ourselves to fix the gaze, not only of our eyes but of
our souls, upon a school exercise in which we have failed
through sheer stupidity, a sense of our mediocrity is borne
in upon us with irresistible evidence. No knowledge is more
to be desired. If we can arrive at knowing this truth with
all our souls we shall be well established on the right founda¬
tion.

If these two conditions are perfectly carried out there is
no doubt that school studies are quite as good a road to
sanctity as any other.

To carry out the second, it is enough to wish to do so.
This is not the case with the first. In order really to pay
attention, it is necessary to know how to set about it.

Most often attention is confused with a kind of muscular
effort. If one says to one’s pupils: “Now you must pay at¬
tention,” one sees them contracting their brows, holding
their breath, stiffening their muscles. If after two minutes
they are asked what they have been paying attention to,

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they cannot reply. They have been concentrating on noth¬
ing. They have not been paying attention. They have been
contracting their muscles.

We often expend this kind of muscular effort on our
studies. As it ends by making us tired, we have the impres¬
sion that we have been working. That is an illusion. Tired¬
ness has nothing to do with work. Work itself is the useful
effort, whether it is tiring or not. This kind of muscular
effort in work is entirely barren, even if it is made with the
best of intentions. Good intentions in such cases are among
those that pave the way to hell. Studies conducted in such
a way can sometimes succeed academically from the point
of view of gaining marks and passing examinations, but that
is in spite of the effort and thanks to natural gifts; moreover
such studies are never of any use.

Will power, the kind that, if need be, makes us set our
teeth and endure suffering, is the principal weapon of the
apprentice engaged in manual work. But, contrary to the
usual belief, it has practically no place in study. The intelli¬
gence can only be led by desire. For there to be desire, there
must be pleasure and joy in the work. The intelligence only
grows and bears fruit in joy. The joy of learning is as indis¬
pensable in study as breathing is in running. Where it is
lacking there are no real students, but only poor caricatures
of apprentices who, at the end of their apprenticeship, will
not even have a trade.

It is the part played by joy in our studies that makes of
them a preparation for spiritual life, for desire directed to¬
ward God is the only power capable of raising the soul. Or
rather, it is God alone who comes down and possesses the

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SCHOOL STUDIES

soul, but desire alone draws God down. He only comes to
those who ask him to come; and he cannot refuse to come
to those who implore him long, often, and ardently.

Attention is an effort, the greatest of all efforts perhaps,
but it is a negative effort. Of itself, it does not involve tired¬
ness. When we become tired, attention is scarcely possible
any more, unless we have already had a good deal of prac¬
tice. It is better to stop working altogether, to seek some
relaxation, and then a little later to return to the task; we
have to press on and loosen up alternately, just as we breathe
in and out.

Twenty minutes of concentrated, untired attention is in¬
finitely better than three hours of the kind of frowning ap¬
plication that leads us to say with a sense of duty done: “I
have worked well! ”

But, in spite of all appearances, it is also far more difficult.
Something in our soul has a far more violent repugnance
for true attention than the flesh has for bodily fatigue. This
something is much more closely connected with evil than is
the flesh. That is why every time that we really concentrate
our attention, we destroy the evil in ourselves. If we con¬
centrate with this intention, a quarter of an hour of atten¬
tion is better than a great many good works.

Attention consists of suspending our thought, leaving it
detached, empty, and ready to be penetrated by the object;
it means holding in our minds, within reach of this thought,
but on a lower level and not in contact with it, the diverse
knowledge we have acquired which we are forced to make
use of. Our thought should be in relation to all particular
and already formulated thoughts, as a man on a mountain

WAITING FOR GOD

who, as he looks forward, sees also below him, without ac¬
tually looking at them, a great many forests and plains.
Above all our thought should be empty, waiting, not seek¬
ing anything, but ready to receive in its naked truth the
object that is to penetrate it.

All wrong translations, all absurdities in geometry prob¬
lems, all clumsiness of style, and all faulty connection of
ideas in compositions and essays, all such things are due to
the fact that thought has seized upon some idea too hastily,
and being thus prematurely blocked, is not open to the
truth. The cause is always that we have wanted to be too
active; we have wanted to carry out a search. This can be
proved every time, for every fault, if we trace it to its root.
There is no better exercise than such a tracing down of our
faults, for this truth is one to be believed only when we have
experienced it hundreds and thousands of times. This is the
way with all essential truths.

We do not obtain the most precious gifts by going in
search of them but by waiting for them. Man cannot dis¬
cover them by his own powers, and if he sets out to seek for
them he will find in their place counterfeits of which he will
be unable to discern the falsity.

The solution of a geometry problem does not in itself
constitute a precious gift, but the same law applies to it be¬
cause it is the image of something precious. Being a little
fragment of particular truth, it is a pure image of the unique,
eternal, and living Truth, the very Truth that once in a
human voice declared: “I am the Truth.”

Every school exercise, thought of in this way, is like a
sacrament.

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SCHOOL STUDIES

In every school exercise there is a special way of waiting
upon truth, setting our hearts upon it, yet not allowing our¬
selves to go out in search of it. There is a way of giving our
attention to the data of a problem in geometry without try¬
ing to find the solution or to the words of a Latin or Greek
text without trying to arrive at the meaning, a way of wait¬
ing, when we are writing, for the right word to come of it¬
self at the end of our pen, while we merely reject all inade¬
quate words.

Our first duty toward school children and students is to
make known this method to them, not only in a general way
but in the particular form that bears on each exercise. It is
not only the duty of those who teach them but also of their
spiritual guides. Moreover the latter should bring out in a
brilliantly clear light the correspondence between the atti¬
tude of the intelligence in each one of these exercises and the
position of the soul, which, with its lamp well filled with oil,
awaits the Bridegroom’s coming with confidence and desire.
May each loving adolescent, as he works at his Latin prose,
hope through this prose to come a little nearer to the instant
when he will really be the slave—faithfully waiting while
the master is absent, watching and listening—ready to open
the door to him as soon as he knocks. The master will then
make his slave sit down and himself serve him with meat.

Only this waiting, this attention, can move the master to
treat his slave with such amazing tenderness. When the slave
has worn himself out in the fields, his master says on his
return, “Prepare my meal, and wait upon me.” And he con¬
siders the servant who only does what he is told to do to be
unprofitable. To be sure in the realm of action we have to

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WAITING FOR GOD

do all that is demanded of us, no matter what effort, weari¬
ness, and suffering it may cost, for he who disobeys does not
love; but after that we are only unprofitable servants. Such
service is a condition of love, but it is not enough. What
forces the master to make himself the slave of his slave, and
to love him, has nothing to do with all that. Still less is it the
result of a search the servant might have been bold enough
to undertake on his own initiative. It is only watching, wait¬
ing, attention.

Happy then are those who pass their adolescence and
youth in developing this power of attention. No doubt they
are no nearer to goodness than their brothers working in
fields and factories. They are near in a different way. Peas¬
ants and workmen possess a nearness to God of incompara¬
ble savor which is found in the depths of poverty, in the
absence of social consideration and in the endurance of long
drawn-out sufferings. If, however, we consider the occupa¬
tions in themselves, studies are nearer to God because of the
attention which is their soul. Whoever goes through years
of study without developing this attention within himself
has lost a great treasure.

Not only does the love of God have attention for its sub¬
stance; the love of our neighbor, which we know to be the
same love, is made of this same substance. Those who are
unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people
capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give
one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing;
it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who
think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of
heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.

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In the first legend of the Grail, it is said that the Grail
(the miraculous vessel # that satisfies all hunger by virtue of
the consecrated Host) belongs to the first comer who asks
the guardian of the vessel, a king three-quarters paralyzed
by the most painful wound, “What are you going
through?”

The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means
being able to say to him: “What are you going through?”
It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit
in a collection, or a specimen from the social category la¬
beled “unfortunate,” but as a man, exactly like us, who was
one day stamped with a special mark by affliction. For this
reason it is enough, but it is indispensable, to know how to
look at him in a certain way.

This way of looking is first of all attentive. The soul emp¬
ties itself of all its own contents in order to receive into itself
the being it is looking at, just as he is, in all his truth.

Only he who is capable of attention can do this.

So it comes about that, paradoxical as it may seem, a Latin
prose or a geometry problem, even though they are done
wrong, may be of great service one day, provided we de¬
vote the right kind of effort to them. Should the occasion
arise, they can one day make us better able to give someone
in affliction exactly the help required to save him, at the
supreme moment of his need.

For an adolescent, capable of grasping this truth and gen¬
erous enough to desire this fruit above all others, studies

• According to some legends the Grail was made of a single stone, in
color like an emerald.

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WAITING FOR GOD

could have their fullest spiritual effect, quite apart from any
particular religious belief.

Academic work is one of those fields containing a pearl
so precious that it is worth while to sell all our possessions,
keeping nothing for ourselves, in order to be able to acquire

Simone Weil

WAITING FOR GOD

TRANSLATED BY EMMA CRAUFURD

"With an Introduction by Leslie A. Fiedler

ffl

A L 1

no

Harper & Row, Publishers, New York
Grand Rapids, Philadelphia, Si. Louis, San Francisco
London, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, Toronto

This book was originally published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons and
is here reprinted by arrangement.

WAITING FOR GOD

Copyright © 1951 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. All rights reserved.
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mission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
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First harper colophon edition published in 1973

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